SEO for Franchises - Subdomains or Folders?
-
Wondering if there ever has been any recent consensus on best SEO strategy for a Franchise.
I feel it is safe to assume that just having one corporate website with a "store locator" that just brings up the address, phone and hours of a location is not optimal. Yes, the important thing is to get a Google Places for Business listing for each location so you can come up in the 3-pack and regular Maps result, BUT, the rankings for the 3-pack is largely determined by the site's authority and relevance to the specific search term used, IN ADDITION TO, the proximity of the business to the search user's physical location.
Apparently it is widely believed that domain authority does not transfer from www.mycorporatedomain.com to somecity.mycorporatedomain.com.
And of course we also know there is a potential for a duplicate content penalty, so you can't just duplicate your main site for a number of locations and change the address and phone number on the contact page.
If the products and or services are identical for each location, then it's going to be somewhat ridiculous to try and rewrite many sections of the website since the information is no different despite the location.
It seems in general more people are advocates of putting location pages or micro-sites in a subfolder of the corporate domain so that it can benefit from the domain's authority.
HOWEVER, it is also widely known that the home page (root URL) of any domain carries more weight in the eyes of Google.
So let's assume the best strategy is to create a micro-site where phone and address is different anywhere they appear and the contact page is customized to that location, and the "Meet The Staff" page is customized to that location. The site uses the same style 'template' if you will as the main site.
Let's also assume you can build a custom home page that has some different content, but still shares the same look and some of the same information as the main site. But let's say between the different phone, address, and maybe some different images and 20% of the content rewritten a bit, Google doesn't view it as dupe content.
So would the best strategy then be to have the location home page be: somecity.mycorporatedomain.com and the product and services pages that are identical to the main site you just use a rel canonical to point to the main site? Or, do you make the "home page" for the local business be a subfolder of the main site.
So I guess what it boils down to is whether or not the domain authority has more of an effect compared to having a unique home page on a subdomain.
What about this? Say the only thing different on the local site is the contact (phone/address) in the header and/or footer of every page, the contact form page, and the meet the staff page. All other content is identical to the corp site, including the home page. I think in that case you need to use a script to serve the pages dynamically. So you would need to server the pages using a PHP script that detects the subfolder name to determine the location and dynamically replaces the phone and address and server different contact and staff pages. You could have a vanity domain mycity.mycorporatedomain.com that does a 301 redirect to the subfolder home page. (This is all ofcourse assuming the subfolder method is the way to go.)
-
Hey There SEOJaz,
As you mentioned the word 'optimal' my own description of this would be:
-
A single website representing the brand
-
A store locator linking to an excellent set of landing pages representing the physical locations of the brand. These pages feature unique, compelling content and good CTAs.
-
A submenu or sitemap somewhere on the site linking to these landing pages to sure they are indexable.
And that's it.
When we start throwing subdomains, 20% different content and micro-sites into the game, what you typically wind up with is confusion, mistakes, content of less than sterling quality and marketing efforts having to be spread too thin across an ecosystem of properties instead of being poured into a single, very strong, branded website.
What I've described is optimal, but I'm not sure I've answered your questions...
-
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Need SEO Opinions
SEO Campaign and Best Practices Hello, I have dabbled with MOZ before and I’m coming back with a project that is going to be a marathon. I have a very general question for some of you SEO professionals. I would like to lay out a scenario and I would appreciate any feedback that you can offer. Let’s say I have a client which is an office cleaning company that just services the local Chicago area, let’s call them ABC123 Commercial Cleaners. They have a website that is Example: abc123commercialcleaners.com. On the website it explains all about their services with several different pages. If we want to start a site on another URL, let’s say officecleaningchicago.com will this hurt our online reputation? Or will it make us stronger? Our plan on paper is to target the different localities around Chicago Example:
Local Website Optimization | | Scott-Jones
napervillecommercialcleaners.com
officecleaningchicago.com
evanstonofficecleaning.com I just wanted to get opinions on whether this is a good or bad idea. If it will strengthen or weaken our brand. I hope I have explained a very general scenario (which is completely fictitious) I would appreciate any feedback that you can offer.1 -
More pages on website better for SEO?
Hi all, Is creating more pages better for SEO? Of course the pages being valuable content. Is this because you want the user to spend as much time as possible on your site. A lot of my competitors websites seem to have more pages than mine and their domain authorities are higher, for example the services we provide are all on one page and for my competitors each services as its own page. Kind Regards, Aqib
Local Website Optimization | | SMCCoachHire0 -
How many SEO clients do you handle?
I work in a small web & design agency who started offering SEO 2 yrs ago as it made sense due to them building websites. There have been 2 previous people to me and I now work there 3 days a week and they also have a junior who knew nothing before she started working for us. She mainly works for me. My question is, how many clients do you think would be reasonable to work on? We currently have around 55 and I have been working there for nearly 5 months now and haven't even got to half of the sites to do some work on. I've told them the client list is way too big and we should only have around 15 clients max. However they don't want to lose the money from the already paying clients so won't get rid of any and keep adding new ones Their systems were a mess and had no reporting or useful software so I had to investiagte and deploy that, along with project management software. Their analytics is also a mess and have employed a contractor to help sort that out too. It's like they were offering SEO services but had no idea or structure to what they did. Meta descriptions were cherry picked which ones to be done, so say 50/60 on a site not filled in. So it's not like I have 45 or so well maintained accounts. They're all a mess. Then the latest 10 new ones are all new sites so All need a lot of work. I'm starting to feel incredibly overwhelmed and oppressed by it all and wanted to see what other SEO professionals thought about it. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | hanamck0 -
Multiple My Business pages affecting local SEO?
Hey Moz! We have a situation with a dentist firm with multiple doctors at the same address. They have two locations for their dental offices, and each of the dentists operate at both offices. The issue: Each doctor insists on having their own by business page for each location and i'm afraid this is hurting their local SEO. We've been tracking keywords by week and we've seen some big fluctuations in ratings and i'm looking into why this is happening. The office in location 1 has it's own Google My Business page and the three dentists have their own my business page set up at the exact same address. The office in location 2 has it's own Google My Business page as well and the three dentists have their own my business page there also. This leads the two addresses of the main offices having multiple My Business pages at the same address competing against eachother since they are all are registered with similar names and specialties. Could this be hurting our local SEO? Thanks! -Z
Local Website Optimization | | zacgarrison_700 -
Do duplicate street addresses on 2 website affect SEO?
Hi, We have 2 websites built for one client that has 2 companies running from the same physical location. Would having the same address listed on both websites affect their SEO rankings? The 2 websites mentioned are linked below: http://anastasiablinds.ca/ http://www.greenfoxwindows.ca/ Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | Web3Marketing871 -
Franchise Content Spinning
Hey Guys, Thanks for taking the time out to read my question, I appreciate it. I know Google doesn't treat all duplicate content the same, but what about this scenario. We have a garage door company franchise that services Seattle, San Diego, & Salt Lake City. It is the same brand, but each area has a different website, catering to their own county. Say I write & post a blog about "how to maintain your garage door" to the Seattle site. This is certainly useful for the other locations as well. So would I get penalized for posting the same article to San Diego & Salt Lake City without massively changing the content to avoid duplication? Or should I dedicate the extra time to revamp the content and avoid duplication? Does Google care about this type of duplication? Thanks in advance!!
Local Website Optimization | | dwayne.jones260 -
Should digital marketing agencies treat SEO differently when it comes to homepage content?
When I review competitor digital agency sites, they seem to have very little homepage content. But how would this be beneficial in gaining a higher SERP rank?
Local Website Optimization | | randomagency1 -
SEO Value in Switching to ".NYC" Domain?
Recently " .NYC" domains have become available for purchase to New York City based businesses. I own and operate a New York City commercial real estate firm, nyc-officespace-leader.com. New domain would be www.metro-manhattan.nyc Our existing domain has been in use for seven years.would there be an SEO benefit to transferring our site to .NYC domain? Or would a new domain kill our domain rank? Thanks, Alan
Local Website Optimization | | Kingalan10